Saturday Run

This weekend was my last long run before my taper for the P2P 100m and I don’t think it could have been any better. Saturday I planned to run 30 miles and in the planning, I was either going to be running at Crater Lake, on The Umpqua Trail or in Eugene. Planning ended with Saturdays run in Eugene and Sundays run on the Umpqua trail. These places fit into the family plan a little better and also allowed us to meet up with friends, and to have a great camp out (if only a short one) in our favorite place.

Saturday I got up at 5:00 even though the bed felt SO good. Because we were driving to Roseburg for a BBQ with friend at 3:00, I only had so much time to complete my run and get on the road. So I fixed my coffee and PB oatmeal and headed out the door by 5:45. The plan was to run on Ridgeline trail and up the Powerlines and then head over to Mt. Pisgah to finish up before heading back home on the road. I wanted to run hills, but I also wanted to get a lot of runnable miles in too.

When I got out the door, I was surprised to find out it was raining. We have had rain all summer and I couldn’t believe we finally got some on my last long one. I headed up Rexius and then Powerline and tried to run some new trail but got stumped a few times and ended up having to retrace my steps – not fun. So I decided to stick with the plan. Ha! About .5 mile later I met up with my friend Laura and her friend, Dani coming the other way and decided to turn around and run with them. One thing about planning to run 30 miles by yourself is that sometimes it just gets lonely and the thought of having company for a some of the miles was just what I needed. Dani was going to show us how to connect Ridgeline to Hendrick’s park so off we went.

I’m not sure if I could find my way to Hendrick’s Park from Ridgeline, but Dani did make it look easy, and having company was great. Dani was nursing a sore leg, so she cut out at Hendrick’s and Laura and I continued on. Laura also didn’t seem to want to try and find our way back to Ridgline so we ended up running down to the river and running on Pre’s trail before heading back in the direction of our homes. Laura is a great running partner and her easy going attitude from pace, route and easy conversation makes the miles click along. When we parted ways on 24th St. we were each at about 20 miles.

The next stage in the run was to pick up Tim and go to Pisgah to finish up the last miles, so I ran home to pick him up and Buddy & Lilly. We drove to Mt. Pisgah and decided to run around to the backside before we summated because it’s more dog friendly when you get away from the Super Highway Summit Trail. We took a new trail #2 which I thoroughly enjoyed and will run again in the next 3 weeks during taper. It is a double track with plenty of room to run side by side with your partner and has plenty of uphills. We ended up a little below the summit before heading back down toward the parking lot to refill water and drop off Lilly. After we finished the last few miles our Pisgah run ended up to be 12.25, just enough plus a little cushion to cover my goal of 30 miles.

After taking the dogs to soak in the river, we headed home for some leftover pizza and showers before jumping in the van for the drive to Roseburg to visit with friends at the BBQ.